The Turnpike CIC was a bold, independent not-for-profit arts project with community at its heart, based in Leigh, Greater Manchester.

This web archive, titled Could this be paradise? reflects on our 5 years in Leigh, highlighting the community voices and artists who have worked with us to shape our organisation.

We want to say a huge thank you to our Turnpike family; the team members, volunteers, artists, community members, peer organisations, funders and supporters who have invested their energy, creativity and ingenuity with us over the years.

Community
Jennifer Lowe, Community Champion
[16:56 - Brit Seaton]
I wonder if I could ask, maybe this is kind of leading on from that or maybe separate in your eye but I wanted to ask, is there anything particularly about The Turnpike CIC that you think is especially unique, progressive or radical?
[17:19 - Jennifer Lowe]
I think we’ve touched on a few points that would absolutely answer that question. For me it feels unique in the way that we work and the way that we connect. So the way that we connect everyone that works at The Turnpike but also the way that we connect with the community. We’re always listening and responding and then giving something back. That for me is its uniqueness and how it’s been very fluid and been able to react in a very positive way. To take the pandemic as the perfect example, you know so many organisations you saw where it’s like oh we need to close or we need to postpone or we can’t do this or we can’t do that. It was a little bit of a negative language. The Turnpike never spoke like that. It was like ok we can’t do it the way that we did before, but we can do these things instead or we can do it a different way. But we talked to one another and we found a way to make things happen even with restrictions and being in the middle of a pandemic. So many creative things happened, still connected with the community, so much engagement, but just in a different way. And actually, looking back, being put in a position where we had to do that has changed our perspective and way of working going forward. And that’s the uniqueness of The Turnpike, it’s always listening, observing, responding and reacting and open to change. So that for me is what’s special about it.